


Papercuts (The Grass Fic 2)

by Nicer_Things



Series: TGF [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Also Markiplier is in it for a really short while, And Safiya Nygaard is mentioned, Blood and Gore, Dan's a bit mean, Emetophobia, Gen, I wouldn't say it's 'graphic depictions of violence' but that's as close as I could get, I'll probably delete this later, It's bad, No really Phil is having a terrible time, Phil's not having a great time, She doesn't say anything though she's just there, You who don't like blood beware, help him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 15:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13907337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicer_Things/pseuds/Nicer_Things
Summary: It's cold and breezy at the top of the strange, lonely mountain, Dan's been acting strangely, nobody knows where they're going and Phil is having a horrible time. The only thing that might make him feel worse is spending any more time with this fellow he knows isn't really Dan.





	Papercuts (The Grass Fic 2)

**Author's Note:**

> Written specifically for like 3 people who agreed to read it. 
> 
> It's pretty gory so if you don't like blood, DON'T read it. STOP IT. NO. TURN BACK.  
> It's also really weird.  
> Read the first Grass Fic before this if you haven't already because otherwise it'll make even less sense, if that's possible.
> 
> But if you're not bothered about nonsensical rambling and gore, read on.

           

* * *

 

 

            There are many nice things to wake up to.

            Breakfast in bed, the loving face of whoever you lived with, the sun streaming in through your curtains and filling the whole room with a golden glow…

            What Phil woke up to was none of these things. What Phil woke up to wasn’t really a nice thing at all.

            When he opened his eyes and regained consciousness, he found himself very cold, leaning against warm linen with an acidic and metallic smell drifting up his nose and a heavy, damp patch on his chest. The air was cold, he was outside, and he felt something strong holding him. He remembered immediately where he was and what had happened.

            “Dan?” he wheezed, feeling something catch in the back of his throat like ten-thousand tiny paper cuts. He immediately began coughing again and felt arms around him pull him more towards the warmth.

            “Right here,” came his friend’s voice, but it wasn’t quite his voice, but it… was. Confusing.

            Phil leaned his head against him and gave a sigh. A large dribble of blood from his cheek smudged down Dan’s white linen shirt as he did.

            “Water?” Dan suggested, producing a large glass of water from beside him, which he had evidently placed down on the rocks. He brought it forward as if it were a gift of offering, but Phil gagged and frantically waved his hand, trying to indicate to move it away.

            “No water?” Dan said, sounding shocked that somebody could ever refuse a drink, “It’ll help,” he added, “With the sickness.”  
            “I wasn’t sick,” Phil told him. He’d managed to stop coughing by now and was now feeling a bit sore and cross.

            Dan clearly didn’t believe his objection, as he gestured to a mess of blood spattered across the rocks, jabbed a finger towards the crimson damp patch on his shirt and then wiped the same finger across his cheek, collecting a large amount of red.

            “It was a cough,” Phil argued.

            Dan gave a snort of a laugh,

            “Must have been a bad cough…” he said, just about under his breath. He seemed to have no sympathy whatsoever. He’d been acting different on the way up here anyway, and Phil didn’t expect him to change just now either.

            “It was,” he nodded. His chest tightened until it felt like someone was tying knots in his arteries. He’d been suppressing making any sort of sound before now, but he couldn’t help recoiling and letting out a pained whimper.

            “Something wrong?” Dan asked, as if there had been nothing wrong before, and patted his friend’s back, which made his cramping worse.

            Phil didn’t answer because he couldn’t choke out any words, but he was shaking and clutched a wad of fabric in his right hand, putting his left over his mouth. He remembered where he was alright and what had happened before he had woken up. He recalled journeying up this mountain (or hill or cliff or whatever it was) which he was currently lying on the edge of, along with a group of other people. He hadn’t taken the time to really see who was in the party, but whoever was in it, he didn’t want them knowing about _this._

“Don’t tell anyone,” he groaned.

            “They’re going to find out anyway, even if I didn’t,” Dan replied, “You’re a mess.”

            Phil had to admit that he was. Another thing he remembered was the ‘astro turf’ that he’d had in his hand only moments before he’d staggered outside. He’d thought that maybe eating it had started this, but now he realised that he hadn’t eaten it at all and his throat still decided that the floor would like to become acquainted with a waterfall of cruor. Everybody in the group had probably seen him stumble outside so Phil supposed Dan was right and that there wasn’t much point in trying to cover up what had happened since then… and what was still happening now.

            Searing agony shot through Phil’s stomach and made its way up through his chest and his throat until it felt like his heart was in his mouth. He pushed himself away from Dan’s grip and keeled over to the side, choking violently.

Dan started to rub his back, yet a forceful ‘NO’ stopped him and instead he was forced to watch his friend choke up his own blood onto the stones for what appeared to be the second or third time. He began to offer the water again for whatever reason. Phil knocked it straight out of his hand and the glass shattered all over. As the water met the blood already on the ground, it hissed slightly before merging together.

Phil caught his breath at last and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, also smearing the scarlet fluid that had started to dribble from his nose across his face.

“You’re a mess,” Dan observed for the second time.

Phil didn’t reply because he was too busy getting rid of anything else that remained in his mouth. It had to stop soon, he told himself. He really wanted it to stop soon so he could go back inside because he was cold and shivery and wanted a hug. But not a tight hug because he didn’t want to bleed on anyone.

“We ought to get going,” said Dan, moving to get to his feet, “They’ll be wondering where we got to.”

“No…” Phil moaned, wrapping an arm around his middle, willing the cramping to ease even a little bit, “I can’t go back like this,” he swallowed. He still didn’t feel like he could stand, and that if he finally uncoiled himself, the pain would get worse.

“I said we ought to be going,” Dan retorted, “And it wasn’t a suggestion,” and when he was being ignored, he took his friend by the wrist, pulling him up to his feet.

“N- No!” Phil yelped, his head going foggy and his vision blurring, the world spinning around him at an alarming velocity. He didn’t want to let himself be dragged into even more embarrassment, but he wasn’t currently strong enough to assert that. He attempted to wriggle free of Dan’s grip, but it turned out Howell was serious.

Phil was swept clear of the ground, his feet catching on shards of broken glass, and found himself on his back, suspended off the ground, in a sort of bridal-style lift.

“No – let me go!” he snapped, angrily, attempting to get himself free, but all in vain. That wouldn’t stop him trying, though, “-No, don’t make me go back, don’t make me go back, don’t-“

            Dan ignored him and carried him towards the cabin on the mountain, despite being clawed at and violently scratched and yelled at as he went.

            Phil didn’t understand why he had to go back inside in the first place; why couldn’t he just stay outside in the fresh air and wait until he felt better? Dan could go back on his own, couldn’t he? Why did he have to go with him?

            He felt tears forming in his eyes and they stung as they rolled down his cheeks, making little streaks in the red. He let out a sharp cry but calmed down after, struggling to compose himself as Dan nudged open the door to the cabin and carried him inside, cradled as if he was dying. Maybe he was.

            The warmth of the building surrounded him and he stopped shivering, reaching to cling on with his arm over Dan’s shoulder as he got a good look around the room. He recognised a few people, and he immediately became even more nervous because they were people he’d rather keep up appearances around.

            Dan laid him down on the long, bench-like seat at the table and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders to cover up the patch on his shirt, then disappeared to find something to clean him up with. Like a baby-wipe.

            Phil cast a long look about the room, trying not to meet people’s eyes as he did. They hadn’t seemed to notice him yet. Or at least that’s what he thought, before he heard someone ask Dan ‘is he OK?’. Said person turned out to be Louise Pentland.

 _“Do I look OK to you?”_ Phil hissed in a whisper, but nobody could hear him anyway because they were all talking in amongst themselves. He spied more people as he looked around again; among them were Mark (more commonly known by his username ‘Markiplier’) and Safiya Nygaard, both of whom Phil really didn’t want to look like this for.

            Usually when you go to see a lot of people who you know, you want to make sure that you look nice for them, to make a good impression. That’s what Phil would have preferred this to be possible in his case, but it was not. His hair was a mess, his shirt was splattered with his own blood, and it was also smeared across his cheek, almost up to his left eye. And he had tears in his eyes.

            He tried his best to fade into the background, but somebody he knew smiled at him and his tears fell from the humiliation.

            He saw Dan coming back then with a rough flannel and a glass bowl of water. The water looked less than clear.

            “You OK?” Dan asked as he sat by his friend’s feet, placing the bowl on the table.

            “No,” Phil frowned, angrily. He had a funny feeling in his chest, too, and felt a bit confused. On one hand, he wanted a warm hug and to stay like that until he felt better, but on the other hand, Dan was the last person he wanted to hold him right now.

            “Just calm down and we’ll get you cleaned up,” Dan said, in a tone that would usually have been calming and soft, but that was now only lacklustre and uncomforting.

            Phil didn’t protest, though the brittle flannel felt like it was going to strip his skin off, because he really didn’t want to look in such a state for any longer if he could help it. Not that the damage wasn’t done already and that it felt like everyone was silently judging him. He’d never be able to show his face again; not even on the Internet.

            He put an arm around his middle and heaved a sigh. Felt like the cramps he got whenever he forgot he couldn’t have milk, only 5 times worse. Nothing he could do about it, though, so he just had to put up with it - along with the embarrassment.

            “Dried fast,” Dan observed, thoughtfully, dampening the cloth again, the water dripping over the blanket.

Phil didn’t reply to this remark and instead only frowned again, having to bear another round of scrubbing. He didn’t even know how long he’d been asleep. How had he fallen asleep in the first place? Had he really been _that_ exhausted?

“All done,” he heard Dan say, dropping the flannel into the bowl and flicking the water off his fingers.

Took long enough.

Phil batted away any form of affection he was offered – which was just about everything – and folded his arms, decidedly.

“Come on; I’m your friend,” Dan argued.

Phil gave a sort of laugh… snort… wheeze… thing, and narrowed his eyes.

“Pardon?” he hummed, “I don’t think so. You see, Dan – the real Dan – wouldn’t drag me into an uncomfortable situation; he’d stay with me and make sure I was clean and not bleeding heavily before getting me to move. You’re hardly him.”

Dan-who-wasn’t-really-Dan-but-who-also-was glowered, clearly not fond of this accusation - or of Phil, for that matter.

“Go socialise,” he suggested – or more ordered – and gestured to the crowd around them, who were still conversing with each other. He seemed a bit angry.

Phil would usually have protested strongly to this, but if he had to be perfectly honest with himself, staying here with ‘Dan’ was a whole lot worse of a concept, so he found himself drifting to his feet with loud clicks from his joints, and moseying his way to somebody who he reckoned hadn’t seen him yet. He brought the blanket with him, wrapped around him to conceal the bloodstain on his shirt.

He found his way to Mark.

“Hello,” he croaked.

“Oh, he _llo_!” Mark smiled in his usual friendly manner and rich voice. He either hadn’t noticed anything or was keeping quiet about it, “Have you asked Dan whether we’re going yet?” he asked.

Phil raised an eyebrow. Where were they going? And why would they have to ask Dan? Why was he in charge of the party in the first place?

“I beg your pardon? Where are we going?”

“Oh, we don’t know. Only your friend knows. He mentioned something about a barrier. To home,” Mark ‘explained’ though it didn’t really… explain much.

“So we’re just… following him?”

“Exactly!”

“Ace,” Phil muttered, shifting his gaze to look to Dan from the corner of his eye.

“Don’t you want to go home?”

“Honestly, right now, I’d rather sir on the side of this mountain until my innards start wasting away-“ (which, considering recent events, would not be very long) “-than spend any more time with _that guy_.”

“That’s not very nice,” Mark said, quietly, in a slightly surprised tone.

“Yeah, well, neither is _he,”_ Phil pointed out, jabbing a finger in Dan’s general direction. He was still very confused as to where he was, why he was here, where he was going, why he was going and now _when_ he was going, and socialising didn’t seem to be going all that great for him. He found himself thinking back to what he had been doing and where he had been only about a half-hour to an hour ago: in that strange white building at the bottom of the mountain. The one that housed the man and his snakes and the café that they never got to go into. Phil remembered Dan pointing at a sign above the door to the snake enclosure that he claimed said ‘snakes’, but when Phil had read it, it had all been gibberish. He wondered why he couldn’t read all of a sudden.

“Alright; let’s get going!”

That was the sudden proclamation that alerted every soul in the room. They all turned towards Dan – including Phil – and eagerly (or not so eagerly) awaited instruction, or maybe a hint as to where they were off to, but none came; everyone only followed out of the door. Feeling still uneasy, Phil joined them.

It hadn’t warmed up outside at all by this time, and as they moved on a bit further, nobody noticed the mess on the rocks. This was the only relief that brought Phil any peace, and even that wasn’t much. He pulled the blanket further round his shoulders and slowed to slither to the back of the group, who were too busy talking to notice him.

That was when the winds changed to blow against them, as if it itself was warning them not to go any further and was trying in vain to push them away, back to relative safety. But the company continued on nonetheless.

Nobody seemed to notice or care where they were heading, as they carried on downhill, but Phil took the time to admire the scenery – and by admiring the scenery, that only included staring up and the sky to see that it looked… close. How could the sky look close? It seemed dome-shaped, but perhaps that was just his eyes, or because he was going dizzy. And even though it was impossible – or at least he reckoned it was impossible – Phil’s first reaction was to assume they were in a sort of snow globe or paperweight. It was the only thing that made a lick of sense.

More realisations started to set in, and one of them was that snow globes and paperweights end somewhere because they had, of course, sides. This meant that Dan – the leader of this party, and whom everyone thought knew where he was going – hadn’t a clue where he was leading them, which just wouldn’t do.

He slipped around the side of the group, dropping the blanket on the ground and leaving it there as he drifted around to join Dan at the front of the pack.

“Hello again,” Dan said, flatly, seeming unimpressed by his friend’s sudden appearance.

“You don’t know where you’re going, do you?” Phil frowned, putting his hands on his hips. He got no reply, but he knew he was right, “You’re just leading everybody to nowhere, but they trust you.”

Dan scowled, which only added to the notion that Phil was correct, so he kept going, pointing out that they were never going to get anywhere and that they’d all be stuck here going in circles until they died off, until Dan finally snapped, reeling around and hitting him straight in the face.

The party stopped moving.

Phil clapped a hand over his mouth in shock, tasting iron, and dribbles of blood flowed in between the gaps in his fingers. This wasn’t from his throat this time – it was from his mouth. His vision turned red and a feeling of anger brewed through his chest and head.

“Idiot!” he retorted, whisking his hand away and letting all the blood drip down his chin and spatter onto the rocks below from his fingers. He could fight; right now, he felt like he really could. He took a swipe at Dan, but he was stopped short.

Dan held his wrist strongly, not even flinching, like an immovable mountain, and made a very serious expression.

Phil’s heart dropped like a brick and his knees buckled inwards. He swallowed what felt like his lungs and his breath staggered.

“You’re an embarrassment,” Dan breathed, and cuffed Phil’s wrist as he shoved him away.

He walked on, the group followed him, and they all left Lester behind.

Phil sat down and watched them go. He put his head in his hands and heaved a sigh. What could he do now? He should never have said anything. Now he was all alone, cold, hurt and with no food or water supply at all.

Not even astro turf.

He supposed that was that, then, and seeing as nobody was coming back for him and he didn’t fancy walking into oblivion with them, anyway, he decided he’d lie right here and wait for them to come around again, then he could be proved right. So he did. He laid down right there and then and stared up at the domed sky.

“Idiots,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.

He had to assume he’d drifted off right then, because when he woke up, he wasn’t cold anymore.

He was warm and felt clean and dry and his throat felt fine. And he was, naturally, quite confused. He couldn’t quite open his tired eyes, but he sensed he was inside.

“…Dan?” he wheezed, though he expected that he might be alone. To his surprise, he felt a warm hand rest on his shoulder,

“Right here,” came a voice from beside him.


End file.
